Bertrand Targets Top Ten Finish

On loan left back Ryan Bertrand has said that Villa are looking up the table and have their eyes on a top ten finish for this season.

The interview on the Official Site says we are targeting Southampton's place in the league - 9th and 11 points ahead of us - as we head into the final games of the season, and although ninth place with that gap may be too much to ask, Bertrand says he'd settle for 10th place which we'd already be in had we a better goal difference.

With ten games left he says it's all to play for, especially with the boost we have received following our last win against Norwich and if we can replicate parts of that game on a more consistent basis, he doesn't believe that target is too pie in the sky.

'There's a buzz about the place at the moment. The win over Norwich does wonders for us. We just need to keep focused now. We have had a mixed bag of results but we had a good win the other weekend and we want to take that into the next game.'

Bertrand adds that we are looking as high as 9th place, although we'd certainly take 10th position in the table this campaign, but with that said, we aren't setting ourselves a points target or a points limit, we will certainly strive for as many as we can possibly get over the coming games, and he feels 10th place would represent a 'really good finish' for us if we could achieve it.

With fans rumbling on about only playing for a half and the old joke now of which half is our good and bad one, we have a new aim following Norwich - we want to know which is going to be our good 16 minutes.

And to be fair to the on loan lad, he doesn't call for anything as ridiculous as a 90 minute performance or for us to replicate those 16 minutes once in every half, but he does point out that if we can consistently repeat our good moments in that game, whether that be the scoring 16 minute period and the defensive display we put in at other points, then there's no reason why we can't have set our own bar and whilst we may not 'match those levels equally' we won't be too far off our aim if we can summon that within ourselves more consistently than we have managed so far this campaign.

The question again remains can we?

We all know this team can play, every now and then they prove it for a bit. If we could do that consistently we'd all be happier wouldn't we.

Ahead of the game against Chelsea, for anyone who was wondering, Bertrand is ruled out owing to the terms of his loan deal.

Probably not the right place for it but interesting little bit in bbc gossip Milner has not been offered a new contract by Man.City yet and Spurs are ready to make an offer. Now if you realllllly want to cheer us up Randy get him back pleaseeeeeee.